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Passage Illustrated

Now little Hop and his brothers saw the Giant coming towards them, but could not make out how he stepped from one hill to another just as if he were flying. But little Hop, who was very fond of reading, had read a story about a pair of Seven-league Boots in a book published by that capital bookseller and worthy man, Mr. David Bogue, of 86 Fleet Street; so he rightly thought no time to be lost. Hop-O' My-Thumb looked about and luckily espied a small cave, into which he told his brothers to hide, and just time to get in himself, when the Ogre, seeing the bank, which was over this cave, laid himself down, as we said, and went to sleep; and as soon as he began to snore, Hop said to his brothers, —

"Now's your time! run off home, and I'll follow you;" but they did not like to leave him behind. However, they trusted to his cleverness; and, as he made a sign to them to go, they did so. Hop-O' My-Thumb then got hold of one of the Boots, which he pulled off the Giant's leg without much difficulty. . . . — "Hop-O' My-Thumb and The Seven-League Boots," p. 25.

The Context in Perrault

He went out, and ran this way and that over a vast amount of ground. At l ast he came to the very road where the poor children were, and not more than a hundred paces from their father's house. They saw the ogre coming, who was stepping from mountain to mountain, and crossing over rivers as easily as if they were little streams. Little Thumb hid himself and his brothers in a nearby hollow rock, all the while keeping watch on the ogre.

The ogre was very tired from his long and fruitless journey (for seven-league boots are very tiring to wear), and decided to take a rest. By chance he sat on the rock where the little boys had hid themselves. He was so tired that he fell asleep, and began to snore so frightfully that the poor children were no less afraid of him than when he had held up his large knife and was about to cut their throats. However, Little Thumb was not as frightened as his brothers were, and told them that they immediately should run away towards home while the ogre was asleep so soundly, and that they should not worry about him. They took his advice, and soon reached home. Little Thumb came up to the ogre, pulled off his boots gently and put them on his own feet. The boots were very long and large, but because they were enchanted, they became big or little to fit the person who was wearing them. So they fit his feet and legs as well as if they had been custom made for him. — http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault08.html

Commentary

In fairy-tales, intelligence is often in inverse proportion to physical mass, so that trolls, ogres, and giants are not usually very bright, whereas an homunculus such as Hop-O'-My-Thumb or Tom Thumb proves a highly strategic thinker, a symbol of human ingenuity triumphing over the raw power of nature. In this Cruikshank illustration, he ensures that his brothers have effected their escape across the moor and towards the forest (on the other side of which is the family's cottage) before he attempts to strip the enormous boots off the sleeping giant, which apparently have conferred upon the Ogre the ability to bestride mountain tops. The Ogre still clutches a large, curved dagger, suggestive perhaps of eastern despotism. As in the original Perrault story in Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (1697), Hop ("Poucet") steals the Ogre's fairy-made Seven-League Boots while the monster is sleeping near the cave where he and his brothers had taken refuge. Whereas the Ogre had a lithe figure, long muscular legs, and lean, bearded face in the previous frame, Cruikshank now reverts to his previous characterization of Ogre as a massive, gap-toothed giant dressed in mediaeval costume, as seen in the plate preceding this, The Giant Ogre discovers hop 'o my Thumb & his Brothers whom his Wife had endeavoured to conceal from him. The belt (not shown in that earlier portrait of the Ogre) makes him appear less obese, and emphasizes the mediaeval setting — which Cruikshank undermines by alluding to his own publisher in what appears an ill-conceived advertisement embedded in the narrative: "that capital bookseller and worthy man, Mr. David Bogue, of 86 Fleet Street" (25). The contemporary allusion, moreover, establishes Hop as an avid reader in an historical period (The Middle Ages) in which few people outside monasteries could read. The story is thus reframed as occurring not in the mediaeval past, but in the nineteenth century, and not in the forests of central Europe, but in English woods. The allusion, then, is more than a mere commercial; it is a disruption in the geographical and temporal settings established by both text and illustration.

In the present illustration, The Giant Ogre falls asleep. Hop 'o My Thumb pulls off the Seven League Boots whilst his Brothers run away, Cruikshank does not justify (as the original telling does) the giant's sudden fatigue in the same manner; rather, "the Boots would not take him through or over the wood, so he was obliged to go round for many miles to get to the other side; and by the time he got there he was tired that he threw himself down upon the first bank he came to, and almost on the instant fell asleep" (25). Cruikshank does not bother to explain why the magic boots will not transport their wearer through or over the woods, whose power seems antithetical to that of the Seven-League Boots. The illustrator again utilizes the same mountain-and-moor landscape as backdrop as in the previous illustration, The Giant Ogre in his Seven League Boots pursuing Hop O' My Thumb & his Brothers, who hide in a cave, but here Cruikshank moves in for a closeup, so that the reader sees only the right-hand side of the cave entrance, and the trees (centre) are bigger, as the boys rush away from the sleeping giant with gestures betokening apprehension, Hop being the last in the fleeing column, as if acting as a rear guard. The continuity afforded by the magic boots will contribute to the coherence of the following frames as he giant's boots, which seem to impart self-confidence as well as speed with their wing-like tops, introduced in this frame, dominate the foreground of the next panel, and even appear to be animated as they bow before their royal majesties in Hop 'o My Thumb presenting the Seven League Boots to the King — (facing p. 28, at the close of the story).

The chief features of this illustration are the Ogre in his mediaeval jerkin, belt, and hose — and the fabled Seven League Boots, which appear in a dozen other European folktales as well as Goethe's Faust, when in Part Two, Act Four, the demonic companion of the protagonist, Mephistopheles, employs such boots himself, rather than conferring them upon the protagonist to aid him in the completion of some daunting task, which is the usual pattern. The term "Seven-League Boots" (that is, footgear that enable the wearer to advance three miles in a single stride) seems to have originated as a translation from the French "bottes de sept lieues", popularised by Charles Perrault's fairy tale Le petit Poucet. They are the last remnant of several other "sevens" in the original story: seven sons of the woodsman, and seven crowned daughters of the Ogre, seven being a number traditionally associated with magic powers and special significance, as in "The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World," "The Seven Arts," "The Seven Champions of Christendom," "The Seven Heavens," "The Seven Sleepers," "The seven last words of Christ," and "The Seven Deadly Sins" — to say nothing of the infamous neighbourhood known as Seven Dials in London, depicted by Cruikshank himself in Sketches by Boz (1836, 1839). One may, of course, speculate as to why Cruikshank reduced the number of brothers from seven to six, and why he eliminated the Ogre's daughters entirely. Certainly the giant's eating his own offspring in the dark seems both too ghastly and too improbable.

Bibliography

Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia. New York: Harper & Row, 1948, rpt. 1987.

British Library. "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Romantics and Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots." London: George Bell, 1865.

Cruikshank, George. Hop-O'-My-Thumb and the Seven-League Boots. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library. London: David Bogue, 1853. (Price one shilling)

Guildhall Library blog. "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014. https://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/a-gem-from-guildhall-librarys-shelves-george-cruikshanks-fairy-library-by-george-cruikshank-published-by-routledge-in-london-c1870/

The Hockliffe Project. "Fables and Fairy Tales. 0038A: George Cruikshank, Puss in Boots." http://hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/0038A.html

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. "George Cruikshank." http://library.tulane.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/fairy_tales/george_cruikshank

Hubert, Judd D. "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 (pp. 286-297). Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462736/pdf

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Koehnemann, Aaron. "Abstract." Ph. D. thesis, The Ogre as Lycomorph. MO Space: University of Missouri — Columbia, 2010. https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/8450

Toledo Museum. "George Cruikshank's "Hop-O'-My-thumb." Story-Telling in Miniature. ​ http://www.toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/online-catalogues/storytelling-in-miniature/118/

Vogler, Richard A. (ed.). Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.

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